Member

Support, not so much in terms of money as in terms of access to exams, is the biggest single issue that home-educating parents talk about. In this amendment, I am asking for the local authority to enable local children to have access to exam centres within a reasonable area and for it to pay the excess fee. The parent will pay the individual exam board fee, but while the exam board’s fee may be about £50, but the centre may charge another £200 or £300. We are looking for that level of support, which is very modest. It should be recognised that this is getting much harder. During Covid, a lot of independent schools stopped providing access for private people to come and have their exams invigilated. We hear lots of stories about people having to travel two hours to get to an exam centre. If we bear in mind that, as I am told, a maths GCSE has four papers, that is a lot of travel that they will need to do.